I emailed him, and he gave me the story behind it. He collected a barrel of candy (50 gallons!) for Halloween as part of his work as a youth pastor. They did a huge challenge called the Pumpkin Hunt for middle and high school aged kids, kind of like a treasure hunt:

We divide kids up into teams of like 4-6 each and they race through different clues that send ‘em all over the place in our community and the first one to make it to the candy wins. There’s also a combination lock on the candy, and along the way they pick up 3 numbers to the lock and have to get ‘em in order and unlock the padlock to actually win.

Wow, way harder than Trick-or-Treat, but it sounds a lot more fun. I wonder if the winner got the whole 50 gallons?

I was overwhelmed by the number of entries and folks de-lurking on the blog. I can’t tell you how much your praise, appreciation and return visits means to me. It’s good to know that my obsession is not uncommon and certainly not as secret as I thought. It made me smile each and every time someone left an enthusiastic entry or a wonderful compliment.

But you’re just here to see about the winner, aren’t you?

First, how I did the drawing: I exported the comment list that includes the name, email address, date & time and IP address of each comment to an excel sheet. Then I sifted through and vetted the obvious, such as if a person commented more than one time, I only used the first comment. This was as good as I could do to keep things on the up-and-up.

Instead writing on slips of paper and picking them out of a hat or something, I went high tech. I sorted the sheet (by one of the fields, I’m not going to tell you which) and then I went to Random.org and used their random number generator to give me a number between 1 and 154. The winner was #13 (hey, I can’t make stuff like this up!).

So, congratulations to Jenna! Her package will go in the post tomorrow. Stay tuned, I’ll be running another giveway (but this time I’m asking something of you!).

As promised in my blogiversary post, I’m givin’ away candy! It’s like Halloween, except it comes to your house instead of you coming to mine!

I’m going to do several drawings over the next week or so, so don’t worry if you don’t win this one, there will be a few opporunities.

What am I giving away? At least a half a pound of honest-to-goodness candy. It could be SweeTarts, Laffy Taffy, Red Vines, candy necklaces or Fun Dip ... or all of the above!

How to win? Just leave a comment here with a real email address in the email field. Don’t worry, no one else can see it but me. One entry per person, only US or Canadian entries please (I’ll try to do an international one soon).

Regular candy reviews will continue below as usual ... the deadline for entry is Saturday, April 22nd at Midnight Pacific time. I’ll announce the winner on Monday, April 24th (at which time I’ll request a mailing address).

As a kid Christmas was probably my favorite holiday, but Easter was a close second, probably because of the candy.

The Easter Bunny graced our house with rather unusual baskets. Besides the customary “hiding of the basket” which got more and more complicated as the years went by, we also got plenty of non-candy items in our baskets.

Our Easter baskets came with a large chocolate rabbit. They were usually solid, but there were years when they were hollow and others when they weren’t even made of real chocolate. There were foil-wrapped chocolate eggs and jelly beans. Sometimes the jelly beans were the spice flavors, sometimes the fruit flavors. I liked them both and usually traded for the black ones (though it was hardly necessary as my brother and sister didn’t care for them and I’d get them eventually anyway). Sometimes there were those premium chocolate eggs like the large Russell Stover ones. But there was always a can of black olives for each of us. I have no idea how this tradition started, but we loved black olives (especially putting one on each fingertip). Later we also got dill pickles and depending on what our tastes were at the moment it could be slim jims or a stick of salami (I kid you not). Our Easter baskets were honestly more like picnic baskets. And we loved them that way.

The photo above was taken in 1969 by my grandfather on the lawn at the side of my grandparents house in North Canton, OH. Sometimes they’d have an egg hunt for us, and I think that’s what I’ve got in the picture ... a hard-boiled, decorated egg that I started eating. Yes, I’m wearing a plaid wool suit. Yes, I look fierce (that hasn’t changed).

So, what did you get in your Easter basket as a kid (or this weekend) that was not quite what most folks expect?

I’m a little tired from my trip and thought I’d let you do the work today!

I took this photo a couple of weeks ago of a candy I’d never bought before. When I took it out of the wrapper I found it, um, mystifying. It looks like a mummy, don’t you think?

It was actually pretty tasty though! I gave it a 6 out of 10.

Anyone know what this candy is? It’s about four inches high ... submit a comment if you’d like to guess. I’ll reveal the answer on Easter Sunday!

UPDATE:

Yes, it is a marshmallow rabbit!

Made by Necco, the package boasts real chocolate and it was actually pretty good. The marshmallow was soft and fluffy without being too sweet. I got it for 25 cents, so keep your eye out for after-Easter sales if this is your sort of thing. The look of the candy suffers from the fact that marshmallow isn’t the best for creating detail, but hey, it’s for eatin’ not staring at.

If you look back through the archives, you’ll notice quite a few things have evolved in only a year. The rating system and of course the entire site design changeover back in November. Since then I’ve reviewed well over 300 candies (I don’t know the precise number) from more than 25 countries.

Of course my obsession with candy has not waivered. In fact, this week I am in New York City and have completely immersed myself in a quest for candy and candy stores. I’ve already visited Economy Candy (everything under the sun), Russ & Daughters (halvah) and Jacques Torres (chocolate). Today I’ll probably head over to Maison du Chocolat and perhaps later this week Dylan’s Candy Bar, Marie Belle, Aji Ichiban and Vosges. If you have suggestions for Manhattan candy stores, leave a comment!

One of the most exciting things about the blog for me has been connecting with so many people and hearing your thoughts and experiences on candy. Each day, each post and each comment just cements my belief that the love of candy is a celebration of community and all the great things that we have in common. I’m so honored that I have so many faithful readers and I hope you all enjoy yourselves and of course it’s great to see the traffic on the site grow and grow each month.

In celebration of the anniversary of Candy Blog, I’m planning a special drawing for some candy next week (when I get home), so everyone gets to share in the fun! (Image swiped from CandyBaskets.com)